French Open Odds

The Rome tournament is over but the second major championship of the tennis season, The French Open, begins Sunday on the red clay of Roland Garros in Paris. It can be a very unpredictable tournament because of the unusual surface. Many players around the world don’t have much experience playing on clay. The Sports Interaction tennis betting favorites are Rafael Nadal on the men’s side and Simona Halep for the women. If Halep plays, that is.

This might be the weakest French Open field in many years because of some top players missing the tournament. On the men’s side, Switzerland’s Roger Federer opted to skip the event as clay is his worst surface and he wants to prepare for the grass-court major Wimbledon, where he is tied with Pete Sampras with a record seven titles. Federer is the all-time Grand Slam king and the reigning Australian Open champion but has just one French title. This year, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova are not in the field. Serena, the reigning Australian Open champion and Grand Slam queen, would have been the heavy betting favorite in Paris but is taking a break to have a baby. You won’t see her again until 2018. The American has won the French Open three times.

Men’s Odds

It’s no surprise that Nadal is the -118 betting favorite as he’s the greatest male clay-court player in history and has won a record nine French Open titles. No player in the Open era has ever won the same Grand Slam event 10 times. Martina Navratilova also won nine times at Wimbledon. Margaret Court won 11 Australian Opens but seven of those were in the Amateur era. Injuries have hampered Nadal in recent years and can partly explain why he lost in the French Open quarterfinals in 2015 and the third round last year. The only other time he didn’t win the tournament was 2009.

World No. 2 Novak Djokovic is +330 and No. 1 Andy Murray +1175. Djokovic completed the career Grand Slam by winning his first French title last year, beating Murray 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 in the final. The Serb had been a runner-up three times. Murray, from Scotland, has never won the French and 2016 was his best result.

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Women’s French Open Odds

On the women’s side, things are very much in flux right now because of who isn’t playing and who might not. In addition to Serena and Sharapova out, so is former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, who just had a baby, and two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, who suffered a hand injury during an attack.

Sharapova recently returned from a drug suspension and was hoping for wild-card entry into the French but that was denied. In fact, the French Tennis Federation also denied Sharapova entry into the qualifying tournament. That’s a moderate surprise because Sharapova is the second-biggest draw among women and won the French Open in 2012 & ’14. Sharapova has, however, been granted a wild card for the Rogers Cup in Toronto, which begins on Aug. 7. sign up at Heritagesports.